


i am in this earthly world

by protectoroffaeries



Series: they think me macbeth [8]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Adultery, F/F, F/M, Heartbreak, Implied Sexual Content, Love Letters, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, References to Macbeth, Stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 14:30:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11853522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/protectoroffaeries/pseuds/protectoroffaeries
Summary: "I am in this earthly world, where to do harm Is often laudable..."





	i am in this earthly world

“Do you love me?”

Eliza fears the words leaving her lips as much as she needs to say them. She holds the letters in her hands, tear tracks already smearing the ink, and her husband says nothing.

They are love letters, but they are not addressed to her. She burns them. She burns the memory of John Laurens.

That is when she is young and foolish.

~

  
Alexander is an enigma. He has a good head upon his shoulders, hence how he rose to his station at George Washington’s hand, and yet, at times, he acts as though he is not learned in the slightest. How can he miss the obvious?

And yet he misses much; his children's interests and growth, his poor wife's loneliness. He spends his days writing, always writing. Eliza fancies that there is an ink-stain on his soul.

Eliza also fancies him, which is quite unfortunate with his constant preoccupations. Still, she is a dutiful wife. She is there when he needs her (rarely), and she is away when he does not (often).

~

  
The mail comes to her hands, as Alexander is busy. She does not recognize anything beyond South Carolina’s postage, and although it is addressed to her husband, he has made it clear that she should not bring him trivial drabble as he is working. It is innocent, the way she checks it.

_Col. Hamilton, it reads,_

_It is my unpleasant duty to inform you of the passing of my son, Col. John Laurens, on the 27th of August..._

_John Laurens._ The name rings of familiarity. A friend, probably.

Eliza waits to tell Alexander of his friend's passing. He would likely not appreciate such a distraction.

~

  
She finds out accidentally.

He kept the evidence, the letters.

(She cannot burn _all_ of them. God forgive her, she is only a woman.)

~

  
There is a stretch of time that feels nonexistent retrospectively. The time Eliza hates her husband. It lasts a few years, in the youth of her children. She acts the same, but she is not. There is something broken inside her.

Though Alexander proclaims his love often, she cannot believe him. _He_ broke her, through the neglect from the first days of their marriage through the burning of his lost lover. Alexander is amazing with words, but words cannot mend heartbreak. Only the ticking of the clock, the falling away of the years, can work such unearthly magic.

~

  
Miss Maria Reynolds is beautiful. That is Eliza's first thought when she opens the door for her.

Her last thought, when she closes the door behind the girl many hours later, is that she finally understands one aspect of her husband she could never puzzle together.

~

  
_Dangerous_ does not even begin to describe the gut-wrenching position letters put their family in. Eliza writes so many letters; perhaps now ink stains her soul, like Alexander's, or perhaps they both have the mark of Hell on them. Are the fumes of drying ink the gateway?

Eliza is foolish again, for she cares not.

~

  
Eliza loves her husband, eventually. After he reads her letters and does not make kindling of them, after he is half-beaten by Angelica, after he is torn to pieces by the press, after he saves them.

The pain and the guilt of the years fall away as she explains the truth to Angelica with the pen of others.

They are an odd pair, Eliza and Alexander, but eventually.

_Eventually…_

~

“‘Liza, the thing about love is, it ain't ever right,” Maria says one night. The sky is black, the moon and the stars gone as a new month is ushered in. A single candle flickers on the bedside table, and Eliza can only just make out the shape of her.

Alexander is away. Likely running his mouth when he should be running the treasury.

“Do you believe that?”

Maria cackles because she is not the ideal woman, she is not the good wife, and she does not force herself to make danity. She has seen and done too much in her young life to keep pace with those of Eliza's upbringing. Eliza doesn't understand, but she accepts that is the way Maria is.

“You say that like you don't.”

“I love my children-” Eliza says, which is an indisputable truth, but Maria rarely has time for her sleak way with words. There is something to be said for being direct.

“I was not talkin’ about children, and you know it.” Maria ghosts a hand across Eliza's chest, if only to prove her point, and Eliza plays right into her hand when she draws her lower lip between her teeth.

Eliza knows exactly what Maria means.

~

  
“I have a friend, Laurens,” says Alexander, not long after Eliza has made his acquaintance. _Oh,_ but he is a lovely man, this Alexander Hamilton. Charming, interesting, quick-witted. She can see how he won over her sister. “We are brothers-in-arms. He is my closest ally in all things.”

“Oh?” Eliza says, but she cares very little for talk of war and the like. It bores her, she must admit. 

“Once, he charged into a duel…” and there it is. The interesting part. Eliza settles in for the story of a duel with a happy ending.

 ~


End file.
